MARK HALPERIN currently teaches at Central Washington University and has taught in Japan, Estonia, and Russia. His poems and translations appear in Virginia Quarterly Review, Yale Review, and Seattle Review. He received the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum for his first book, Backroads (University of Pittsburgh Press). His last book of poetry, The Measure of Islands, was published by Wesleyan University Press, and followed A Place Made Fast (Copper Canyon Press). He and his wife, the painter Bobbie Halperin, live near the Yakima River, which he fishes avidly.